Without Privacy There Can Be No Democracy

                This post is a summary of three articles. The first with the title above was published in September of 2013 at http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/19039-without-privacy-there-can-be-no-democracy. The second was published in March of 2014 at  http://www.dw.de/surveillance-a-symptom-of-unchecked-power/a-17488914.  The third was published in June of 2014 at  http://www.radiolive.co.nz/Clare-Curran-Without-rights-to-privacy-there-is-democracy/tabid/721/articleID/4882

       The president of Brazil, Dilma Roussef, spoke this morning at the United Nations and delivered a powerful indictment of spying by the NSA on behalf of U.S. She said, "without respect for a nation's sovereignty, there is no basis for proper relations among nations." While most Americans see this as a rift between Brazil in the U.S. over the issue of our spying on them, President Roussef highlighted the most important point of all in her speech this morning. She said, "without the right of privacy, there is no real freedom of speech or freedom of opinion, and so there is no actual democracy." This is not just true of international relations. It is also true within the U.S. Back before the Kennedy administration put an end to it, Edgar Hoover administration was infamous in political circles in Washington DC for his spying on and blackmailing of both Americans politicians and activists like Martin Luther King. He even sent M.L.K. tapes of an extramarital affair and suggest that M.L.K. should consider committing suicide. That was a shameful period in American history, and most Americans think it is behind us. But the NSA, and other intelligence agencies have put the practice of spying on average citizens in America. As Brazil's President points out, without privacy there can be no democracy. Democracy requires opposing voices, it requires a certain level of reasonable political conflict. And it requires that people committing acts of journalism can do so without being spied upon. Perhaps a larger problem is that well over half of the NSA's budget has been outsourced to private corporations. These private corporations maintain an army of lobbyists in Washington DC who constantly push for more spying, more money for their clients. We need a new Commission to investigate the nature and scope of our government spying both on our citizens and on our allies. But even more than that we need to go back to the advice that President Dwight Eisenhower gave us as he left the presidency in 1961. He warned about the rise of a military-industrial complex, suggesting that the search for profits, override the protective mechanisms that keep government answerable to its people. Government is the protector of the commons. Government is of by and for we the people. Government must be answerable to the people.                                                            As the world recognizes the Day Against Cyber-Censorship, we looks at a pair of countries that have long struggled with the issue. Internet users in Iran and China have known for years that they are under surveillance. Revelations from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden made it clear to people around the world that their digital communications are being tracked and saved by the U.S. spy agency. That was one of the reasons why the NSA and its British counterpart GCHQ were included on the 2014 list of enemies of the internet published by Reporters Without Borders. "The mass surveillance employed, many of them exposed by NSA whistleblower Snowden, are all the more intolerable because they will be used and indeed are already being used by authoritarians countries such as Iran, China, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain to justify their own violations of freedom of information," the report said. "How will so-called democratic countries be able to press for the protection of journalists if they adopt the very practices they are criticizing authoritarian regimes for?" Despite some minor loosening of restrictions under Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, authorities in Iran have continued to develop a "national Internet", that would cut off access to material deemed unacceptable, the report said. Filtering content, controlling Internet service providers, intercepting communications, staging cyber-attacks and imprisoning bloggers and Internet activists are common practice in Iran, Reporters Without Borders wrote."The general reaction is to describe how horrific the Iran's National Internet is, everyone calls for it to be abandoned,"said Abadpour, a jury member of 'The Bobs,' https://thebobs.com/portugues/  DW's award for online activism. Such a national network, which provides services to people in Iran without connecting them to the wider, public Internet, could be developed with help of the Chinese Internet authorities responsible for creating the country's Great Firewall, which for years has censored or filtered online material from Internet users in China. At a time when messages can cross the Internet nearly instantaneously and when Internet data is growing, the government does not have the resources to monitor all Internet activity, which makes self-censorship especially powerful for the Chinese government, according to Hu Yong, a chinese media critic and jury member of The Bobs. In addition to having what Reportes Without Borders calls the world's most sophisticated Internet censorship system, China is also the world's biggest prison for online activists, with "at least 70 online information providers currently in prison because of their Internet activities." The http://www.wefightcensorship.org/, a project run by Reporters Without Borders, list 166 online activists in prison around the world, plus another three killed this year. But all the nations listed in the Enemies of the Internet report share one feature: the excesses of surveillance and censorship lie in a few people being able to determine what the public can read, write, and comment on, Abadpour said.  

         Democracy is an accomplishement and wholly valued, but without rights to privacy thre is no democracy. Chilean novelist and human rights activists Ariel Dorfman said, "Surveillance, in any land where it is ubiquitous and inescapable, generates distrust and divisions among its citizens, curbs their readiness to speak freely to each other, and diminishes their willingness to even dare to think freely." Edward Snowden's revelations on the full extent of global surveillance have had a chilling effect on the democracy ideal of privacy, an ideal which Snowden asserts a child born today will have no notion of. We are becoming a networked society in which surveillance has become quotidian and data mining commonplace. Social media, which can be seen as a leading vehicle in the exchange of personal information, has complicated cybersecurity. We are now reliant on digital technology. That reliance is being manipulated, subjecting us to the arbitrary powers of companies and government, and undermining the secure storage of our data in order to make way for increased surveillance. Increasingly there has been a dissonance between security and privacy in the digital rights. Any prospective government must make the internet off-limits policy to government interference.

Lift Tomorrow's Growth For Better Economic Future

             This post is a summary of four articles. The first with the title above was published in April 2015 at http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2015/NEW041615A.htm.   The second was published in March 2014 at http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21599782-instead-crises-past-mediocre-growth-big-riskunless-productivity-rises-life. The third was published at http://www.focus-economics.com/regions/latin-america. The fourth was published athttp://www.delivering-tomorrow.com/why-global-connectedness-matters/

              Current growth in the global economy is simply not good enough to reduce high unemployment, bolster middle-class income, and drive poverty reduction, IMF Director Christine Lagarde said. Speaking at a conference ahead of the 2015 IMF, World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington, she said a better future depend on lifting today's growth, lifting tomorrow's growth, and working together. Lagarde noted that the IMF's forecasts project the global economy to grow this year at 3.5%, about the same rate as last year, and at 3.8% next year. "So the good news is that the global recovery continues. The not-so-good news is that growth remains moderate and uneven. Participants at the Spring Meetings would be discussing how to prevent this 'new mediocre' becoming the 'new reality', she stated. Policymakers could start by lifting today's growth, measures should include: 1) A package of demand-support policies that is tailored to specific situations and includes accomodative monetary policy where is needed, and smart fiscal policies. 2) Addressing financial stability risks emanating from super-low interest rates, volatile commodity prices and exchange rates, and the potential rise in U.S. short-term interest rates. 3) Stronger financial policies to tackle financial risks that are rising, from banks to the nonbank sector, and from sovereign solvency to market liquidity. "Lifting today's growth is not enough, we also need to lift the rate at which economies can grow over the medium term. Potential growth rates are going down, and this is in part because of changing demographics, lower productivity and, in some countries, the legacy of the crisis," she stated. Reversing this trend means making serious structural reforms that encompass markets, infrastructure, trade, and investment in people. Implementing these reforms will call for strong leadership, she said.

                Blessed with high-grade ores and cheap ene, Peru's output of copper, already the world's third largest, will more than double in the next three years, thanks to the opening of several low-cost mines. But rather than make a new dawn, this burst of investment comes at the twilight of the great commodity boom occasioned by the industrialisation of China and India. By providing an unprecedented  boost to the region's terms of trade, this handed many Latin America countries a bounteous decade. No longer. Commodity prices are down by a quarter from their level of 2011, with prices of minerals failing by more than those of foodstuffs. After growing by an average of 4.3% in 2004-2011, the region's economies managed just 2.6% last year. Even peru, along with Panama the region's star economy of the past decade, felt the colf draft: it expanded at 5% in 2013, down from an average of 7% since 2005. The picture is more nuanced. Latin America saved and invested more than in the past (though less than other parts of the world did). The World Bank's economist for L.A. points out that the investment rate in the region, at almost 25% of GDP, has at last caught up with that in South-East Asia (though Brazil, at 18%, is a laggard). Some countries have been less responsible than others. Venezuela, with a fiscal deficit of 12.5% of GDP last year, is paying the price of squandering its oil windfall. Argentina is moving towards more orthodox policies, and may just avoid disaster. Having used fiscal stimulus to counteract the 2009 crisis, some governments, notably Brazil, were slow to tighten again. More than economic instability, the worry for L.A. is low growth, the risk that 3% has become the new norm. Latin America must look more to productivity to boost GDP. Productivity has improved a bit, but still lags behind Asia. Although Latin Americans have more education than in the past, international tests show that they still do not learn enough in school. There are also a relative lack of innovation, poor transpot nerworks and a lack of competition.

              Latin America's performance was disappointing in the first quarter. It is expected to have contracted 0.2% in the first three months of the year. This is despite the fact that most economies in the region continued on a healthy, albeit slower growth path in first quarter. Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela, largest members of the Mercosur Bloc, are expected to have contracted, causing the region's economic deterioration. The U.S. economy, which experienced a healthy recovery in 2014, also decelerated in the first quarter, although the slowdown is likely temporary as it was caused by harch weather conditions. Latin America's largest economy has deteriorated drastically in recent years and barely managed to eke out growth in 2014. Brazil's economy is expected to worse this year as the austerity measures will dampen private consumption in the near-term and business confidence remains at record low.

             Globalization is crucial for economic growth. It has lifted millions of people out of poverty. Citizens of globalized countries enjoy access to a wider variety of goods and services, lower prices and more and better-paying jobs. Globalized countries maintain a competitive edge, and their populations enjoy more prosperity. Europe offers an important example of how cross-border integration spurs economic development. Five years into the global crisis, however, some might argue that the risk of globalization outweight the benefits. There is a convincing evidence to the contrary. The Global Connectedness Index (GCI) concludes that every country has untapped possibilities to benefit from more connectedness, and the potential gains reach trillions of dollars. While the economic dimension of globalization tends to dominate debate, it is important to remember that a globalized world is also about advances in human development: in education, for example. Cross-border flows of information and people, manifest themselves in greater understanding among nations. Shared information enables innovation, and more cooperation often leads to less conflict. Education equality is strongly linked to employability.

GDP Growth 2014

            This post is a summary of a book published with the title of, "World Economic Outlook: Uneven Growth, Short-term and long-term factors." And published in April 2015 at http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2015/01/pdf/text.pdf. Again, as happened in 2013, we can see the Brazilian GDP growth among the lowest in the world.

           The complexity of the forces shaping macroeconomic evolutions around the world and the resulting difficulty of distilling a simple bottom line. Two forces are shaping these ecolutions and the euro area crisis are still visible in many countries. To varying degrees, weak banks and high levels of debt; public, corporate, or household, still weigh on spending and growth. Low growth, in turn, makes deleveraging a slow process. Potential output growth has declined. Potential growth in advanced economies was already declining before the crisis. The crisis made it worse, with the decrease in investment leading to even lower capital growth. The effects are even more pronounced in emerging markets, where aging, lower capital accumulation, and lower productivity growth are combining to lower potential growth in the future. The sharp decline in the oil price came as a surprise, and most of explanations suggest that the decline will likely be long lasting. Exchange rate movements have been unusually large. The dollar has seen a major appreciation and the euro a major depreciation. Some countries' currencies move with the dollar, others with the euro. Add to this a couple of idiosyncratic developments, such as the economic troubles in Russia or the weakness of Brazil. On net, our baseline forecasts are that advanced economies will do better this year than last year, and that emerging markets will slow down to last year. Global growth remains moderate, with eneven prospects across the main countries and regions. It is projected to be 3.5% in 2015. A number of complex forces are shaping the outlook. These invlude medium and long trends, global shocks and many country specific factors. This growth outlook for emerging markets reflects more subdued prospects for some large emerging economies as well as weaker activity in some major oil exporters because the drop in oil prices. China is expected to put greater weight on reducing vulnerabilities from recent rapid credit and investment growth. Hence the forecast assumes a slowdown in investment, particularly in real estate. The outlook for Brazil is affected by a drought, the tightening of macroeconomic policies, and weak private sector sentiment, related in part to the fallout from the Petrobras investigation. The growth for Russia reflect the economic impact of oil prices and geopolitical tensions. Growth in L. A. slowed to 1.3% in 2014 and its projected to soften to an even lower rate in 2015. The downturn in global commofity markets remains the main drag on activity in South America, even though lower oil prices and U.S. recovery provide a boost to other parts of the region. Low business and consumer confidence in Brazil  weigh further on the near-term outlook. Brazil's economy is projected to contract by 1% in 2015. Private sector sentiment has remained stubbornly weak, even since election-related uncertainty dissipated, reflecting the risk of electricity and water rationing, unaddressed competitiveness challenges, and fallout from Petrobras investigation. The Brazilian authorities renewed commitment to rein in the fiscal deficit and reduce inflation will help restore confidence in Brazil's macroeconomic policy framework, but it will further curb near-term demand.

  PanAmerican Countries GDP Growth 2014                   Others Countries

     Panama  6.4%                                                                Ethiopia  10.3%

     Bolivia  5.4%                                                                 China  7.4%

     Colombia  4.6%                                                              India  7.2%

     Paraguay  4.4%                                                               Nigeria  6.3%

     Costa Rica  3.7%                                                            Philippines  6.1%

     Guyana  3.6%                                                                 Ireland  4.8%

     Ecuador  3.6%                                                                Algeria  4.1%

     Uruguay  3.3%                                                                Korea  3.3%

     Canada  2.5%                                                                  Turkey  2.9%

     U.S.A.  2.4%                                                                United Kingdom  2.6%

     Peru  2.4%                                                                     Germany  1.6%

     Mexico  2.1%                                                                  Spain  1.4%

     Chile  1.8%                                                                     Portugal  0.9%

     Argentina  0.5%                                                               Russia  0.6%

     Brazil  0.1%                                                                     France  0.4%

     Venezuela  - 4.0%                                                             Japan  - 0.1%

                                                                                             Italy  - 0.4%

                                                                                            Ukraine  - 6.8%

World Press Freedom Day 2015

                Last Sunday, 3rd May, all the world celebrated the importance of keeping all kinds of media free. This is a basic human right, the right to report the news telling the truth.  This post is a summary of five articles. The first with the title above http://www.un.org/en/events/pressfreedomday/. The second with the title of, "Syrian journalist Mazen Darwish winner of UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize 2015." At http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/freedom-of-expression/press-freedom/unesco-world-press-freedom-prize/. The third was published with the title of, "World Press Freedom Day: call to protect freedom of expression. At http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/may/01/world-press-freedom-day-call-to-protect-freedom-of-expression. The fourth was published at https://cpj.org/events/2015/05/world-press-freedom-day-2015-let-journalism-thrive.php. Thr fifth was published athttps://cpj.org/blog/2015/03/brazilian-bloggers-encounter-threats-online-and-of.php#more

                This year UNESCO, the United Nations agency mandated to promote and protect press freedom worldwide, has named the CNN Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour its Goodwill Ambassador for Freedom of Expression and Journalist Safety. UNESCO is focusing on three themes for World Press Freedom Day this year: 1) The need for "quality journalism," reporting that is accurate and independent, remains a constant concern in a media that is changing due to technological developments. 2) Gender imbalance continues in the media 20 years after the Beijing Declaration for Change. All too few women journalists are able to reach decision-making position in the media. 3) The third theme is digital safety, a topic of growing concern because digital communications makes it difficult for journalists to protect themselves and their sources. The annual UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize ceremony will take place this year in Riga, Latvia. The winner is Syrian journalist and human rights activist, Mazen Darwish, who is currently imprisoned. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, "quality journalism enables citizens to make informed decisions about their society's development. It also works to expose injustice, corruption, and the abuse of power. For this, journalism must be able to thrive, in an enabling environment in which they can work independently and without undue interference and in conditions of safety."

                An independent international jury of media professionals recommended Mazen Darwish in recognition of the work he has carried out in Syrian for more than ten years at great personal sacrifice, enduring a travel ban, harassment, as well as repeated detention and torture. The international jury stressed the need to remember Mr. Darwish, currently in prison, along with so many other human rights defenders and journalists. Darwish, a lawyer and press freedom advocate, is the president of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression, founded in 2004, and one of the founders of syriaview.net, a news site banned by the Syrian authorities. He has been detained since February 2012, when he was arrested with colleagues Hani Al-Zitani and Hussein Ghareer. Numerous human rights and press organizations around the world have issued calls for the release of Darwish and his fellow journalists. Created by UNESCO in 1997, the annual UNESCO/Guillermo Cano Prize honours a person, organization or institution that has made an outstanding contribution to the defence and,or promotion of press freedom anywhere in the world, and especially when this has been achieved in the face of danger. The $25,000 prize is named in honour of Guillermo Cano, a Colombian journalist who was assassinated in front of his newspaper in Bogotá in 1986. It is funded by the Cano Foundation (Colombia) and the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation (Finland).

              The Guardian is among more than 50 organisations using World Press Freedom Day to call governments to protect freedom of expression in the wake of the attack on Charlie Hebdo and increasing state surveillance and censorship. The call is laid out in a letter that says: "After the attack at the office of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo that left 11 dead, we, the undersigned, reaffirm our commitment to defending the right to freedom of expression, even when others find it offensive. The letter goes on to detail incidents of violence and threats being used to intimidate media, as well as censorship by governments in countries such as Turkey, Russia and Egypt. It also condemns attempts by European governments to use Charlie Hebdo attacks to clamp down on freedom of expression. It singles out for criticism calls from European ministers for internet service providers to "identify and remove online content 'that aims to incite hatred and terror' and suggestions in the UK that security services should have the ability to monitor communication. It says: "This kind of government response is chilling because a particularly insidious threat to our right to free expression is self-censorship. In order to fully exercise the right to freedom of expression, individuals must be able to communicate without fear of intrusion by the state."

              Every year, 3 May is a date which celebrates the principles of press freedom: to evaluate press freedom around the world, to defend the media from attacks on their independence and try to pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the exercise of their profession. Over 100 national celebrations take place to commemorate this day.

             Enderson Araújo is so afraid of being killed that he fled his home and is reluctant to talk on the phone for fear he is being bugged. Araújo is the blogger behind Mídia Periférica, a blog run by young journalists in the city of Salvador that focuses on news in poor communities that are undercovered by mainstream media. That is little confort to Araujo, but at least he knows where the threats are coming from. Ana Freitas has no such advantage. Freitas, a 26-years-old freelance journalist, has been harassed on an almost daily basis since writing about machismo and misogyny in the public spaces of the brazilian internet. Anonymous users of forum have threatened her. The incidents, which happened over the course of several days, forced her to close some of her social media accounts and change the settings on others. After someone discovered her address and publicized it, she said she was sent feces, maggots, sex toys, and other things through the mail. Freitas said she filed a report on the harassment at one of the special stations set up for women. In Brazil, journalists have been targets for abuse and worse. CPJ records show it is the 11th deadliest country for the press. Brazil' poor record of impunity adds to the violence and intimidation. Independent bloggers who cover crime and corruption are particularly at risk, a CPJ research shows. Their work can reach a broad audience, yet the major media rarely pay attention if they come under attack. Décio Sá, a blogger in Maranhão was killed in April 2012. His blog covered the intersection between politics and organized crime. Another victim was Mario Randolfo Lopes, a blogger who wrote about corruption and ran a local website in Barra do Piraí, a town near Rio de Janeiro. Araújo and Ana Freitas are freelancers and their safety is unlikely to be a priority for authorities. They continue to work. And they continue to fear.

              

Civil Society and Social Movements: Building Sustainable Democracies in Latin America - Part II

              This post is a summary of the same book from last week, the book with the title above, published in 2008 at  http://idbdocs.iadb.org/wsdocs/getdocument.aspx?docnum=1555501. Now the summary is from Chapter 5, "Participatory Budgeting from Above and Below: Civil Society's Role in the Spread of Democratic Institutions." And chapter 13, "Citizen Engagement and Democracy in the Age of Social Movements."

           

             

                Over the past 15 years, a policy innovation called "participatory budgeting" (PB) has stimulated citizen paricipation at unprecedented levels and helped to achieve greater transparency. The term "participatory budgeting" can refer to an array of policies and practices that directly involve citizens in decision making. These mechanisms make it possible for citizens to participate in more regularized, active, and informed ways. Used broadly, the term 'participatory budgeting' encompasses policies that engage citizens in budget-related decision making. Here, PB will be defined as regular mechanisms that directly involve citizens in decisions on the allocation of public resources and the monitoring of expenses at the local governmental level. There are at least three distinct approaches to PB: 1) "pure PB" programs engage citizens to vote directly on decisions about the funding or supervision of public works projects. 2) "participation-focused" programs aim to involve historically excluded groups, usually by focusing on citizens in marginalized areas. 3) "transparency-focused" programs increase participation in monitoring public budgets and the budget-making processes, this approach require raising public awareness, improving the quality and quantity of public information, and developing the expertise of citizens around specific policy issues. Just as the approaches vary, the purpose of the PB projects also vary. PB aims to achieve three types of overarching (but not mutually exclusive) objectives:  1) greater efficiency in the provision of services and public goods through the reform of the administrative apparatus.  2) greater social justice through the fairer allocation of resources.  3) more active citizen engagement and greater commitment to democracy.  Each goal stands on its own merits, but also connects to broader aims, namely good government and democratic deepening. For instance, the first goal addresses the efficiency of local government and public administration through increased accountability and by exposing corruption. The second goal encompasses a variety of social justice objectives, including efforts to involve underrepresented groups, improve social cohesion, and alter spending priorities. The third goal serves political objectives that may further decentralize democracy, open government processes, and/or inject more deliberation and civic participation into decision-making practices. Each goal advances democracy regardless of the definition used: If one conceives of democracy in simple procedural terms, then PB will improve democracy if PB stimulates greater participation. If one uses the idea of substantive democracy, then PB will improve democracy if PB is able to lead to more egalitarian outcomes. A clearer picture of PB's historical growth improves our understanding of the relevant context: according to a low estimate, by 2000 nearly 100 cities and five states had implemented PB in Brazil. Participatory budgeting came to the fore at the same time that the Latin America's record on government transparency and fighting corruption was poor and stagnating. A host of analysts and major NGOs have long feared that the lack of government accountability could undermine or slowly erode democracy in the region. "Social citizenship" (inclusion, participation, and equality) has not been significantly expanded in most L.A. countries. Though recent polls show that most citizens do not want a return to authoritarian governments, but their unequivocal support for democracy has actually fallen. Many are ambivalent about democracy because they perceive that the misuse of power results in unfairly distributed resources and economic burdens. There are further concerns that the culture and practice of democracy will erode if public institutions are not reinvigorated and reformed. PB is a policy that provide improvement in governance. Reforms of public budget processes can do what few other reforms can do by directly addressing civic participation, accountability, transparency, and the strengthening of public institutions. This set the stakes and hopes are high. Monitoring and evaluation are required after public budgets are implemented. The intention of reformers is that PB will stimulate the latter, leading to fairer and more stable and representative democracies.

                The central challenge of this study has been to describe "the direction which future efforts should take to strengthen people's trust in their governments and foster engagement of civil society and to provide guidelines for government, civil society and multilateral institutions in maintaining effective citizen participation in economic and social development projects." The political writer Tilly found that "democratization in itself promotes social movements," so that "by the turn of the twenty-first century, people all over the world recognized the term 'social movement' as a trumpet call, as a counterweight to oppressive power. The surge of such movements has elicited the following rationales: 1) Disillusionment of both the political left and right, with "statism", that is, loss of belief that government should or could be the main instrument for designing and implementing solutions to economic and social problems. 2) political-psychological trauma of citizenry, induced by long periods of authoritarian governments. 3) Demonstration effect and logistic support, from successful social movements in the U.S. and Europe advocating improvements in human rights and the environment. 4) Media, internet, and instant communications helped citizens to develop common bonds, organize and become important in political debate and decision making.  An efficient democratic state can not exist where civil society is weak. The past decade has witnessed a increase in the power of social movements in L. A., significant not only in terms of their number but also in terms of its political impact. Citizens in a democracy have two ways to gain the attention of government to their concerns and to influence public decision making, that is, to be effectively engaged with their government: 1) they can join and/or cast their votes for political parties and their candidates that support their views. 2) they can form or join organizations of like-minded citizens (CSO) to represent them in the political forum and in public debate. Our guiding hipothesis is that democracy is "deepened" through both means. People form and join social movements, NGOs and community-based organizations seeking to overcome what they perceive to be political, social or economic "wrongs", for example, to combat deprivation of human rights and abuse of power. The independent citizen organizations are important instruments to oblige governments and others with power to respond effectively to such problems. The dominant governing model in the region has been of a "top-down" adversarial system, where stakeholders assume that all political situations are "zero-sum", with little but rhetorical concern for building consensus. This no-compromisse, bunker mentality characterizes not only reactionary governments, but also governments of the political left. Such a political atmosphere leaves little room for imputs from social movements whose representatives are not selected or controlled by dominant political leaders. For the immediate future, two of our studies, one concerned with mobilization of the diaspora communities in support of community-based CSOs, and the other with the need to expand civil society's role in helping overcome underemployment, point to new paths for joint action by civil society and government that can help mitigate persistent social-economic problems. The traditional and standards of citizen participation in CSOs should be reinveinted to encourage greater engagement. There is a new social phenomenon, a global civic consciousness, that can strongly support the region's civil society. Globalization is enhancing the potential participation of citizens around the world with the region's CSOs for several reasons: a new civic consciousness is forming that calls for the protection of environmental sustainability and enhanced human rights.